The Last Race
by bobblychicken
Summary: Dusty's body has taken all the abuse that it can stand and it just can't stand no more. He's come to terms with it more or less and decided to fly one last race before retiring early, but maybe this planned retirement race was just one too much?


Dusty was so far behind already, but he had to land. He was burning up and his whole body was in agony. He needed a breather. Just a small one, he told himself as he started dropping down to the desert floor. He landed roughly enough, having lost all strength to control his descent about 10 feet from the ground. He was sobbing for breath as he rolled to a stop, steam coming up from under his hood. As he tried in vain to recover himself, he was vaguely aware of the sound of liquid pattering into the dust below him. Confusion passed gropingly across his face before he slowly looked around for the source of the noise. Then out of the corner of his eye, something caught his attention. He let out a soft breath. A dark fluid dripped steadily from his left engine exhaust. How long had that been happening? He hadn't even noticed that anything had busted.

Dusty's body seemed to sag into his landing gear then, eyes staring blankly ahead at nothing. His breathing had calmed down, coming out in soft, shallow puffs, but his engine hadn't cooled down in the slightest since he'd landed. The heat was starting to make him delirious. Blackness was slowly creeping in from the edges of his vision and his hearing started fade out as if he were water-logged. He stumbled on his wheels when his sight became obscured completely as he was overcome with a sickening feeling similar to falling out of the sky. He squeezed his eyes shut and trembled, waiting for it to pass. He opened his eyes again only to see utter blackness still, and he thought at first that he hadn't actually opened his eyes for a moment. He wanted to cry out in anguish but lacked the strength to even do so currently.

Slowly his vision started coming back into focus. He was colorblind at first but color started slowly seeping back into the environment around him, but with it came odd pops of shapes and wisps of unnatural colors that would flit in and out of the air. Heat from his engine rippled, shimmered, and danced in front of his eyes, encouraging his delirium. The hallucinations only seemed to gather more clarity as he tried to shake them off. Then he froze. He recognized the silhouette of one of the larger apparitions. Not possible. But who else could those gullwings belong to?

"Skipper!" he managed to push out, his voice full of tears.

He wasn't real. None of this was real. He knew it to be so, but in his current mental state he figured that it was only natural that someone who was supposed to be dead would suddenly appear standing in front of him. Skipper was the one person that he wanted most to be with him right now. The features were still blurred and unfocused, but somehow Dusty thought he seemed to be annoyed as they stared at one another.

"Skipper…?"

The apparition didn't move. Didn't speak, only kept rippling in and out of focus.

"I'm tryin' Skip… I'm trying to do just what you taught me to." Dusty let out a tearful sigh, "But it's just not going to happen."

He was done for; it was over. But it was becoming so hard to let it go with his deceased mentor gazing down on him. Suddenly the wind whipped around them and Skipper's form started losing it's integrity.

"Skipper… Skipper! Don't go, Skipper!" Tears started to flood his panic-filled eyes, almost in near hysterics as he called after his hallucinations to no avail. "Please, don't go!"

And then he was alone again. He felt unsteady on his landing gear. He squeezed his eyes shut again, his tears cutting grooves into the dust and dirt and the dark liquid that continued to leak steadily but freely down his nose. In all his years alive and competing in races, pushing himself to the brink of destruction in a fare few of them, he had never quite felt it like he was feeling it now. He had never felt so worn down. As if it was all crashing down on him just in this moment.  
And yet, as angry, defiant sobs wracked his already pained form, he kicked his engine up into gear and started to roll forward. He slowly gained speed, in spite of himself. Finally, Dusty bit his tongue to keep from screaming as he took off from the ground, watching it fall away below him. He felt like he wash going to come apart any second, but he had to carry on. He was going to win this one last race even if it killed him. So long as even a single piece of him made it over that finish line first, he figured that he could be satisfied with that. A shadow passed overhead, and a gull-winged shape wheeled out in front of him before melting away again. A determined smile spread across Dusty's face.

"See you at the finish line."


End file.
